Every second Wednesday, the Circular Industries Talks are organised at the Circular Industries Hub. On Wednesday November 23, Julie Teuwen presented at the Circular Industries Talks. Julie Teuwen is Assistant Professor within the Aircraft Manufacturing Technologies group at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft. In her talk, Julie discussed her research into Circular and Biobased Materials for Sustainable Wind Turbine Blades.
Circular and Biobased Materials for Sustainable Wind Turbine Blades
We should reconsider the structural design of a blade where we take into account the advantages and manufacturing possibilities that new circular materials offer.
From Julie's talk, we learned that:
- Materials for composite structures are a key enabler for creating more sustainable wind turbine blades: this could entail thermoplastic, reversible thermoset resin systems and/or bio-based fibres.
- We should reconsider the structural design of a blade where we take into account the advantages and manufacturing possibilities that new more circular materials offer.
- We should design the blades with second use i.e. structural re-use of the materials in mind.
- We should design the blades for circularity.
- We should focus on long lifetimes in all lives of the material
- ... and the waste stream at the end of the material lifetime should still be useful for use in other products and/or blades
- We can’t only assess the most sustainable solution by addressing the technological advances, we also need to interact closely with other disciplines: assess ecological footprints of different scenarios, address economic aspects/ circular business models and social aspects,… if we want to get these more sustainable blades implemented.
About Julie Teuwen
Julie Teuwen is an associate professor at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology since 2016. She holds a PhD in the field of liquid moulding of thermoplastic wind turbine blades from TUDelft (2011). After obtaining her PhD, Julie worked as a materials and production process engineer at a wind turbine blade design and blade manufacturing company. Her research now focusses on materials and production processes for future wind turbine blades that can be structurally re-used after their lifetime as a blade and easily recycled at the end of the material life.
Curious about Julie Teuwen's talk?
The Circular Industries talks
The goal of the Circular Industries talks is to share knowledge across Leiden, Delft and Erasmus and to complement and deepen the knowledge already available within the Circular Industries Hub. The talks are organized on Wednesday morning from 10:00 to 11:00. The talks are online (Microsoft Teams). Next up in the CI Talks: Martijn van der Star (7 December)